An Apology To My Forgotten Classics

My first foray into gaming wasn’t entirely fruitful. At the age of 4, in a small room decorated with the best ‘80s decor had to offer, I noticed an odd looking device with large, chunky keys. It appeared to have a cassette deck attached to it, and looked rather serious. A contraption that your Dad used to calculate household heating expenditure. Spreadsheets, charts, formulae — that sort of thing. Black, monolithic, far too many buttons.

The more granular details are fuzzy now, but I do remember the word DATACORDER embellished with a spectrum of colour behind. It didn’t take too long to discover that this was also a games machine of sorts, the ZX Spectrum II.

If I am to be entirely honest, to say that this was my first foray into gaming is stretching the truth. It was my first foray into gaming by proxy. I’d watch my brother play Jet Set Willy, R-Type, and Arkanoid. The learning curve was too steep without his help. “What are those colours, and why does it make that noise for 10 minutes before you can do anything?” Reassured that I wasn’t having a seizure, this was the ZX Spectrum II loading data from tape, to machine, before the game was playable.

It was all very interesting. But I wasn’t entirely convinced, and found that gaming on the Spectrum wouldn’t hold my attention for very long. Was it the BASIC commands you had to type in to load a game? The long and noisy loading process? The basic gameplay, or the fact that I was just 4?

Maybe it was a combination of all the above, but I can only hypothesise that the damage had been done at that point. It would be some time before I’d look at games as a form of entertainment again.

Do not underestimate the power of PlayStation

In actuality, gaming would define my younger years, in part by Sega and Nintendo — but mainly Sony. Almost exclusively so. I owned a NES, a Master System and a Mega Drive. I do have fond memories of those consoles, however, the memories they created are a distant little speck lodged in my hippocampus, filed under “pretty neat”.

That changed in 1996. The Sony PlayStation, and all its iterations since, would dominate my free time. Having a limited budget for a number of years would ensure that games outside the PlayStation domain would have to be overlooked. If it didn’t exist on a PlayStation, it just didn’t exist.

As a result, I’ve rather embarrassingly overlooked some incredible experiences that lived on other consoles, and on the PC too. So sit back, relax, and grab yourself a beverage. Let’s take a trip down random access memory lane.

Doom

It seems right to start with Doom, probably one of the most influential games of all time. That seems like an understatement. It really is very difficult to articulate just how much Doom would influence the gaming industry. A household name, even until this day, the hype around its release was astronomical. Somehow though, I escaped the hype entirely — completely unaware of the impact it was having on the home PC market, and on University networks in particular.

"Since today’s release of Doom, we have discovered [that the game is] bringing the campus network to a halt… Computing Services asks that all Doomplayers please do not play Doom in network-mode. Use of Doom in network-mode causes serious degradation of performance for the player’s network and during this time of finals, network use is already at its peak. We may be forced to disconnect the PCs of those who are playing the game in network-mode. Again, please do not play Doom in network-mode."

Carnegie Mellon University, just after Doom was released

With no real means to play Doom on our meagre 25Mhz PC, coupled with my parents probable disapproval of such a violent game, it would be years before I could experience Doom. 28 years in fact. Sure, it came out on the PlayStation eventually, but I was preoccupied with other titles then. Thankfully, common sense prevailed in 2021, and I purchased the Ultimate Doom on Steam for a very reasonable price. I’m happy to announce that I managed to complete all episodes. No, I won’t tell you on what difficulty I completed the game.

After 28 years from its initial release, I can confirm that Doom is an exceptional experience that is a hell of a lot of fun to play. While I do feel level design has moved on since it’s inception, it didn’t detract from mowing down squads of hell spawn with my trusty shotgun.

Halo: Combat Evolved

From one classic first-person shooter, to another. If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve maybe seen my tweet on how I only played Halo online, and never played through the campaign. Quite ridiculous really, given how it took the foundation that Doom created, and modernised it further. Again, it’s difficult to articulate the impact this game had on the industry. Standing on the shoulders of giants indeed!

Not being able to play this at the time hurt. I couldn’t help but peek over the wall in jealously when it launched with the Xbox in 2001. Thankfully, I was eventually able to play it, albeit only multiplayer mode, on PC. Not long after, the media would begin to hype that Sony themselves were working on a “Halo killer”. Then, this was too lofty an ambition, and even more so when we look back at the eventual release of Killzone.

Killzone eventually released, and rather predictably came up short against the sublime gameplay of Halo. Thankfully because of Xbox Gamepass, I am enjoying the spoils of Halo some 20 years later. A promise to myself, and to Joey ST, to complete the campaign because he was so dismayed that I had only played the multiplayer mode.

An enjoyable experience so far, it is absolutely dripping in atmosphere, and I’m keen to progress to discover more. Thankfully, even though so much time has passed since release, I know little about the main story. Favourite moment so far? Marines shouting “How’s it feel to be dead?!” after killing multiple Covenant.

The work that Bungie carried out to get Halo released just in time for the Xbox launch seems nothing short of a miracle. A ridiculously short development push coupled with executives suggesting the aesthetic quality of the game be changed, could have made for a very, very different title. I and many others are glad it released as Bungie intended.

Fun fact: Bungie had settled with the name Halo, but Microsoft executives weren’t so keen. The solution? Add two words to the title — Combat Evolved.

Bioshock

“No Gods of Kings, only Man.”

At this point, you’re probably noticing a trend. Aside from the last title (No peeking!), all the games so far are first-person shooters. They’re also first-person shooters which did predominately well on Microsoft hardware. When this game also released on the PlayStation 3, which was notoriously hard to develop for, it ran somewhat poorer than the more optimised 360 version. I didn’t want to purchase a version that was “inferior”, and would ultimately dampen the experience.

Bioshock has an incredible art-direction and a compelling storyline which takes inspiration from famous author, Ayn Rand. Philosophical Objectivism interwove throughout makes for the perfect narrative driven first-person shooter. Players assume the role of Jack. After crash landing in the Atlantic Ocean, Jack manages to find a lighthouse. Finding a Bathysphere within the lighthouse, he makes his way to Rapture. This would mark the beginning of an amazing three part series — and I haven’t played a single one.

Why have I not given Bioshock the chance it deserves?

Of all the games listed in this piece, this is my biggest why. “Why have I not given Bioshock the chance it deserves?” There’s ample opportunity now, especially with the release of Bioshock: The Collection. I intend to purchase Bioshock: The Collection for my ageing PS4 and enjoy every single moment of it.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

“You’re finally awake.”

Yes, I am aware of the meme — painfully so at times. I am aware that there’s also a running joke that Skyrim will likely be available on Samsung fridges to play in between meals, as it’s constantly being updated and released on emerging platforms.

A beautiful looking game for sure, and one that gamers hold close to their hearts, but it has just never appealed to me — outside of the crazy memes spawned on the internet. Perhaps it’s just too overwhelming. I get a little stressed, the cognitive load on my brain too much even considering this one. Maybe I just don’t have enough time to dedicate to this classic, knowing that I won’t get the best out of it? I’m not entirely sure.

Or perhaps, and most likely, I’m just not fond of the medieval inspired setting of Tamriel, the odd NPC dialogue or the seemingly clunky nature of the combat. I’ve always found more traditional, JRPGs more enjoyable, more engaging and inviting. Am I wrong about this? I don’t feel compelled to give it a go, but I’m happy to be proven wrong.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

There are many Nintendo games that I haven’t had the opportunity to play, but The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the only title that has made it here. The word masterpiece is so often used with great abandon that it has lost all meaning over time, but not when applied to Breath of the Wild. By all accounts, this is a truly exceptional game.

Could this be Nintendo’s magnum opus?

My goodness does it look beautiful running on the Switch. Trust Nintendo to be able to produce something so breathtaking on severely underpowered hardware. It just looks so captivating, artistically charming and, well, fun — could this be Nintendo’s magnum opus?

I can’t vouch for the game myself, but this quote from GameSpot was certainly enough to whet my appetite, “[Nintendo] takes designs and mechanics perfected in other games and reworks them for its own purposes to create something wholly new, but also something that still feels quintessentially like a Zelda game … It’s both a return to form and a leap into uncharted territory, and it exceeds expectations on both fronts.”

I have a Switch, so I have no excuses. I’ve never played a Zelda game. This will be my first. What a great time to be a gamer.